Sports

When I was six years old I wanted nothing more than to play football. I begged and begged, yet got nowhere close to persuading my mother to allow me to play. One day she suggested I play lacrosse instead of football, so I tried it and fell in love with the sport. Fast forward to my sophomore year of high school, I was on the varsity lacrosse team practicing for the first playoff game, listening to the encouraging yelling from my coaches. “Run faster!” “Attack the groundball!” “Don’t be afraid to get hit” were among the more common phrases shouted across the field at toward any variety of players. When practice ended the team captains had a meeting with the team, they told us the story of our rivalry with Centennial High School, and how it was our responsibility to knock them of the pretty little pedestal that they thought they were on. Everybody walked out of the locker room with an overwhelming since of urgency, and importance riding on the following day’s game. Our game didn’t start until 7:30 so we had a long break before we had to be back at the school to board the bus. Three friends and I decided to walk to my house and order a pizza, which was delicious. Anyways, I played guitar for a few minutes while I waited for my friend James to get off the phone. On our way back to school, I realized I was chewing on a guitar pick. I was extra careful about where I was stepping, to make sure that I would not trip and fall and end up swallowing it on accident. This is when my friends decide it’d be a great idea to run the rest of the way to school, eventually; somehow, I ended up swallowing the guitar pick. When I got to school I explained to my coach what had happened and how I think it was stuck somewhere in my throat because it hurt very badly. His immediate response was “don’t be a pussy, put your pads on.” So after weighing everything, the hyped up importance of the game, and my coach’s thoughts, I put my pads on and played almost the entire first half until I got blind sided by a kid that was twice my size. By this time the guitar pick had traveled to the esophageal muscle, which is in-between the esophagus and the stomach, and gotten lodged in there. When I was hit, the impact caused the pick to dig into the sides of the muscle; I can’t even put what I felt into words. I sat out the rest of the game, rode the bus back to school, and walked home before I could get in touch with my mom and tell her what had happened. Even after we got to the emergency room I had to wait 4 hours to get into surgery.

When we watched the YouTube videos in class last week about the gymnast, and the pageant girls I got really angry. I’ve had first hand experience with modern day sports and how players are treated and the pressure to perform. Every sport has been enveloped by the American drive for winning, and violence. From professional football all the way down gymnastics for toddlers our culture has affected the innocent fun that we experience while playing sports.